The High Court has granted an anonymised applicant from Georgia leave to seek judicial review of the refusal of his international protection claim, limited to challenges concerning credibility and the assessment of medical evidence.
In a judgment delivered on 25 November 2020, Ms Justice Tara Burns said the applicant had shown substantial grounds to argue that the International Protection Appeals Tribunal acted unlawfully, irrationally, failed to consider material matters or improperly evaluated evidence when refusing protection. The court granted leave for those grounds to proceed. It did not decide whether the refusal should ultimately be quashed.
The applicant had sought refugee status and subsidiary protection, saying he feared persecution or serious harm following alleged assaults by an unnamed neighbour in 2009 and 2012. He also cited his Ossetian ethnicity. The International Protection Office recommended refusing both forms of protection, relying in part on Georgia’s designation as a safe country of origin. The Tribunal affirmed that recommendation in a decision dated 18 August 2020.
The applicant requested an oral appeal hearing to explain medical documents and the reason for their late submission. The Tribunal asked for submissions on why a hearing was required and later gave him until 14 July 2020 to provide the documents. They were not received by that deadline. The Tribunal decided it could assess the appeal and further documentation submitted on 30 July without an oral hearing. The High Court said the applicant had been given a lengthy opportunity to address the issue and found no arguable basis that the interests of justice required a hearing.
The applicant also challenged the Minister’s designation of Georgia as a safe country of origin and argued that the relevant provisions of the International Protection Act 2015 were incompatible with European Union law. The court rejected the challenge to the legislation as unarguable, finding the safe-country concept derived from the original EU Procedures Directive, which continued to apply in Ireland. It also refused leave to challenge Georgia’s designation, finding the applicant had not shown its particular significance to his case. The judgment noted that Georgia had also been designated safe by 11 other EU member states.
The court reserved the question of costs and adjourned the proceedings to 11 January 2021 for the respondents’ opposition papers. The leave decision permits the specified judicial review grounds to proceed; it is not a final ruling on them.